


greedy

by zauberer_sirin



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Director Daisy Johnson, F/M, First Kiss, Future Fic, Love Confessions, Office Sex, Romance, Sexy Times, Undercover, Unresolved Sexual Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-11
Updated: 2018-06-11
Packaged: 2019-05-20 23:17:03
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,840
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14904059
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zauberer_sirin/pseuds/zauberer_sirin
Summary: Coulson thinks - no, he's sure - Daisy is flirting with him.





	greedy

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Skyepilot](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Skyepilot/gifts).



He thinks… no, he’s sure of it.

She’s flirting with him, he’s not stupid, he can see that.

But of course she’s not flirting _with him_ , she’s flirting with the character he’s playing, the one he needed to infiltrate the party.

She’s pretending she doesn’t know him, just like she’s pretending she’d like to know him better.

But it’s weird, knowing that it’s fake, the flirting, because she still sounds so much like Daisy.

(The tone sounding so much like the way she would sometimes talk to him, joke with him, tease him, the way she used to do when they first met, and then she didn’t, and now that she’s his Director it has started again, the jokes the teasing, _the tone_ , and Coulson pretending it’s not real flirting) 

That’s the difference between them, Coulson guesses; he needs to be playing a part as remote as possible from his own life, while Daisy likes to just offer slightly altered versions of herself, she is not at home with complete fabrications, and it wouldn’t do in this case. Coulson is anonymous, he can pretend. Daisy can only appear as her public self, even if it’s an altered version of it.

“Pablo Jiménez, what an extraordinary name,” she says, when they introduce her to Coulson.

Coulson smiles.

“Thank my parents for that,” he says, like he is pleasantly mortified.

Daisy gives him a long look.

“For more than just the name,” she says.

The other guests in the conversation chuckle, some because it’s funny, some because Daisy looks like that, and he looks like that, and it’s _absurd_. He joins the laughter, in the latter category.

Going into the mission taking advantage of Coulson's invisible public profile, pretending not to know each other, it's a good move, it lets them cover more territory. The flirting lets them work _together_ without raising suspicion. It's a good strategy, one Coulson should have come up with, but he wouldn't.

Daisy slips from view easily and he – well, he's invisible already.

This part is a bit exciting, he has to admit. Checking room after room trying to find a computer that would let daisy get into the mainframe. Coulson playing the lookout guy, which brings him back for sure. Like a rookie agent following the boss' lead. Following his Director, once more.

“Locked,” Daisy points at the door she was trying.

“Suspicious?”

“More like _Bingo!_ ,” she says.

“I've got a gadget for that,” Coulson tells her.

“Of course you do,” she laughs.

“It will only take a minute.”

He attaches the device to the lock and they wait.

“Sorry about the flirting, back there,” Daisy tells him while they wait, her tone suddenly taking on a serious note. “It helps me in these kinds of situations, helps me relax and not think that I'm lying,” she explains. “But I’m sorry.”

Coulson shakes his head.

“Ah, yes, I was having a very hard time, with people believing you were hitting on me for real. How dare you.”

Daisy turns and looks at him, with a warm smile, and something else, like a question that doesn’t make it to her mouth. Then the device beeps and the door opens. The warmth of Daisy's reaction follows as they walk into the room.

“I hope we got the right guy,” Coulson comments, their host seemed very eager to nurture a connection with the new version of SHIELD, but according to Daisy he just wants to exert his anti-Inhuman influence from the inside, while his subcontractors sell weapons to hate groups. The kind of plot twist that makes you lose faith in humanity, Coulson thinks, and also makes him want to wash his hand after shaking the man's.

“It’s just my hunch but…” she shrugs.

Then I’m sure we got the right guy, Coulson thinks. He knows Daisy trusts her hunches - she just pretends she doesn’t because she has this idea that she’d come off as arrogant otherwise. Not that she would ever talk about it, it’s just one of those things Coulson knows after so many years of knowing her, and how that gifted brain of her works, sometimes against her.

She crosses the room to where the computer is, her dress softly moving with her. It’s not expensive, but it’s elegant, and it’s not something he’s ever seen Daisy wear. 

“How long is this going to take?” Coulson asks.

“Who do you think you’re talking to? I might not be Skye anymore, but I’m still Rising Tide.”

“Ten minutes then?”

She mock-gasps.

“Eight. I’m _offended_.”

He chuckles, vaguely aware he’s having more fun in this mission than he should. 

Re-building SHIELD after everything that had happened consisted mainly in this kind of small-scale, intel gathering missions. Their days were still life-or-death situations (especially for Daisy - no, especially _for Quake_ ), but there was a structure to them, a structure he hasn’t felt in ages.

“I remember the first time I had to infiltrate a rich people’s party,” Daisy comments, while working away at the keyboard.

“Ian Quinn,” Coulson utters, voice dripping with disgust.

“My dress is much prettier now,” she replies, as if it was nothing, all she had to go through, almost getting caught in that first party, that first official mission for future Agent Skye, as if memories of Ian Quinn didn’t affect her, didn’t recall the feeling of bleeding out in a damp Italian cellar. 

“You’re the Director now, the dress gets an upgrade,” he says.

“Thank you.”

She switches off the computer, makes a _all done_ gesture to Coulson, waving the flash drive in her hand.

Coulson goes to open the door.

“Wait!” Daisy whispers, putting the palm of her hand to his chest. “I think I’ve heard someone outside.”

Coulson only half-registers her warning, his eyes going to the fingers spread across the front of his shirt. The gesture is casual, but intimate. It’s shockingly new too. Daisy has never really been casual about touching him. Now she leaves her hand there, over his heart, and Coulson worries she’ll notice how fast it’s beating now. Yet the more he tries to slow his pulse down - basic SHIELD stuff really, rookie stuff - the more his heart seems stubbornly opposed to the idea.

Daisy looks up, and for a moment there’s something weird in her gaze Coulson can’t identify - then he realizes that this up close (they’re almost pressed against each other, listening for footsteps outside the door) he can see she’s wearing fake eyelashes, not much longer than her own, but different enough to give her the look she wants when appearing as Quake in public, the way she uses make up to distance herself from those looking at the role she plays. 

“If we get caught we can always pretend we were looking for a makeout spot,” she tells him, letting her fingers slip a couple of inches.

“Daisy.”

He watches her purse her lips, looking as alarmed by the whole thing as he feels.

“Sorry, it’s just… it seems a shame to waste such a nice dress,” she explains, in a soft, dreamlike voice, like she’s just going with some nameless flow here.

“Daisy, this is not- It’s because I’m not me.”

She rolls her eyes, dropping her hand to her side.

“Of course it’s _because_ you’re not you. Pablo Jimenez I’m not afraid of losing by being too greedy.”

Coulson doesn’t have time to question that statement, because indeed they almost get caught, but Daisy times it impeccably so they can slip past security. They don’t have to make out to get away with it - and part of Coulson is a bit disappointed, he admits, which is good enough reason why it’s better it didn’t happen.

 

+++

 

He knows she's in there even before he notices the light in the office. She always works late, but maybe tonight she's up for a different reason.

Coulson knocks on the door and closes it behind him.

Daisy is still wearing the party dress. But the make-up is gone, and the fake eyelashes are gone, and the way she moves tells Coulson she is back to the version of herself he sees every day.

“Do you want to talk?” he says.

She smiles, like she appreciates that he thinks it’s her choice.

She shrugs, tapping her fingers lightly against the edge of her desk.

“Am I your Director right now? Are you my agent, or…?”

“I don’t know,” Coulson admits. “Who do you want me to be?”

Daisy blinks slowly.

“It’s that easy, uh? You’ll be _whoever I want_.”

Coulson swallows, the air of the office as charge as it was back at the party, he nods.

He watches Daisy seize him up. 

For a moment it looks like she is indeed going to want to talk about it, to revisit that room in the party, revisit the way they looked at each other.

He watches her weigh all the pros and cons, people think Daisy is impulsive (she likes cultivating that notion, she thinks it protects her)but she is anything but. Coulson can tell in her eyes the exact moment she decides to wave the whole thing away.

“It’s fine, Coulson. I shouldn’t have… all that back there… I was-”

He interrupts her gently, a tug of her arm, giving her a moment before he kisses her. She lets him. The word she was about to say gnaws at him, the unfairness of it all. He wants to prove to her that… - yes, even if it’s being arrogant. 

Daisy more than lets him kiss, opening her mouth under him hungrily, her hands holding onto Coulson’s clothes - he changed them after the party, foolishly thinking that would help put what had happened behind him.

“Daisy… you wouldn’t be _greedy_ ,” he tells Daisy, and then he runs his fingers lightly over her arm. “And you were right, it’s a shame to waste such a nice dress…”

She chuckles a bit, and it feels a bit like when she was fake-flirting, but it feels better, he knows it's real, it's charming, he is charmed, drawing his mouth across her neck as he – as they move together backwards against the desk. She climbs on it, wrapping herself around Coulson. He can feel the warmth of her bare legs even through the fabric of his clothes. And he’s also sure Daisy can feel his growing hard-on as she pulls his body against hers. No, _he’s sure_ of it, the way she starts smiling against his mouth even as they keep kissing.

She rests one hand on his belt. It leaves Coulson breathless, like a teenager, with the vertigo of it all. He had forgotten, somewhere along the way he had forgotten sex was supposed to feel like this.

“I wasn’t lying when I said I was grateful to your parents…”

They are kissing, she has him trapped between her legs, against the desk, and his fingers slip up her thigh under her dress, his fingers slip up, deep, and Daisy is flirting with him.

She’s still flirting with him.


End file.
